The alarm went off at four-thirty and I wanted to commit murder.

Not figuratively. Genuine, premeditated, first-degree murder against whoever invented the concept of mornings. My body felt like someone had replaced my muscles with overcooked linguine during the night, every joint protesting the basic act of sitting upright. The ceiling stared back at me with the same bland indifference it always wore, completely unbothered by my suffering.

Four hours of sleep. Maybe less. The conversation with Hikaru had eaten into what little recovery time I had left, and while I didn’t regret a single word of it, my spine had opinions about the matter.

I rolled out of bed and hit the floor with the grace of a tranquilized rhino.

Right. Thursday. Training with Vale. The man who believed that appropriate mentorship involved throwing first-year students through walls and then lecturing them about form while they lay in the rubble.

I pulled on the training gear Aurora had bought me, noting how the compression shirt now sat against actual muscle definition instead of hanging off soft dough. Three weeks ago I could barely see my collarbones. Now my arms had visible striations when I flexed, and my shoulders filled the shirt properly for the first time since arriving at this academy. The Limit Breaker kept doing its thing, converting every sexual encounter and training session into permanent physical gains that no normal human body should produce this fast.

Hikaru’s door was closed. No light underneath. Good. She needed rest more than anyone in this building, though knowing her, she’d probably been awake since three doing one-armed push-ups or something equally insane.

I grabbed a protein bar from the kitchen, filled a water bottle, and headed out into the California predawn.

The campus at four-forty in the morning existed in a state of eerie perfection. No students clogging the pathways. No Sapphire girls power-walking in formation toward the library. No Ruby idiots roughhousing near the fountain. Just empty walkways, ocean breeze, and the distant cry of seabirds who apparently shared Vale’s opinion about the virtue of early rising.

I jogged toward the Summit gym, my new running shoes gripping the pavement with satisfying traction. C-rank Endurance made the jog feel like a warm-up rather than punishment, which still felt surreal considering that three weeks ago this same distance would have left me gasping against a lamppost like a chain smoker at mile one.

The Summit gym appeared in the darkness ahead. Same locked door. Same electronic panel blinking red.

I checked the time. Four fifty-two.

Vale wasn’t here. Because of course he wasn’t. The man operated on a temporal plane that bore no relationship to the one the rest of humanity inhabited. Last time he’d been forty-five minutes late and then lectured me about punctuality with zero self-awareness.

I leaned against the wall, ate my protein bar, and waited.

At four fifty-nine, exactly one minute before the scheduled time, the electronic lock clicked green and the door swung inward on its own. No Vale in sight. No footsteps. No dramatic entrance. The door just opened, like the building had decided I was allowed in.

Spatial manipulation. Right. The man could warp reality like folding a napkin. Opening a door from wherever he was probably qualified as a party trick.

I stepped inside. The lights were already on. The resistance band station was already calibrated. And Dominic Vale sat in a chair at the far end of the gym with his legs crossed and a cup of coffee balanced on one knee, watching me with those mismatched eyes like he’d been there for hours.

"You’re on time today."

"You’re here today," I shot back. "What happened, did the road of life finally install GPS?"

Vale’s mouth twitched. "I had a productive morning. Three cups of coffee and a phone call that will either make both our lives significantly easier or significantly shorter." He gestured toward the resistance bands. "Warm up. Same as yesterday."

My body filed a formal grievance at the word "yesterday." Twenty-two rounds of bodyweight exercises followed by Bronze-tier resistance training followed by ability work had left me in a state that medical professionals would describe as "profoundly inadvisable."

But I walked to the station and started my push-ups anyway. Because what else was I going to do? Die?

Actually, yes. Literally yes. The timer in the corner of my vision kept counting. Fourteen days and some change. Every rep I completed, every training session I survived, every stat point I gained pushed that number further from zero.

By round six my arms were shaking. By round ten my abs felt like someone was ironing them from the inside. By round fourteen I’d entered the zone beyond pain where movement becomes mechanical and your brain detaches from your body’s constant complaints.

Vale watched the entire time. Sipping coffee. Making notes on his tablet. Occasionally checking his phone.

I finished round twenty-two and collapsed onto the mat like a building condemned for structural failure.

"Good," Vale said. "Now the real work."

"You say that every time." I stared at the ceiling, my chest heaving. "And every time it somehow gets worse."

"That’s because you keep surviving. The moment you stop finding it difficult, I’ll know I’m not pushing hard enough."

He set down his coffee cup and walked to the center of the gym floor. No resistance bands this time. No equipment at all. Just empty space and the flat expression of a man who’d killed things that would turn most hunters inside out.

I dragged myself upright and joined him.

"I’ve got a question."

"You always do."

"When are you going to teach me something cool?"

Vale raised an eyebrow. The ice-blue one lifted slightly higher than the storm-grey one, giving him an asymmetric look of mild surprise.

"Define cool."

"I mean actual combat technique. Advanced ability integration. Spatial awareness training that doesn’t involve you throwing balls at my head while I’m mid-squat. Something I could use in a gate to save my life or someone else’s." I spread my hands.

"All we’ve done for a week is calisthenics and resistance bands and running until I puke. I’m stronger, sure. My stats are climbing. But I could get that from any gym teacher. You’re the strongest hunter on this faculty and you’ve got me doing push-ups like a gym class freshman."